Tragedy Sells

Even in death, Dale Earnhardt remained the master of merchandising himself.

May 2001 By Multiple Authors

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It is said that Elvis Presley earned more money dead than he did alive. Most likely, that will not be said of Dale Earnhardt -- the purse money alone during his 22-year career amounted to a remarkable $41 million -- but the puzzling and troubling accident that resulted in "The Intimidator's" death at the Daytona 500 this year certainly sparked a bizarre orgy of buying and selling of stuff even remotely connected to the 49-year-old stock-car hero.

Prior to his death, online listings of Earnhardt collectibles had averaged about 10,000 items a week in 2001. In the week after his death, more than 200,000 items popped up on-screen for sale.

An example of the hysteria went like this: In an auction that ended a few minutes before Earnhardt's crash, a seller tried to get $49 -- a buck off the original retail price -- for a 1:24 scale model of Earnhardt's rare 2001 Busch Clash car, which was sponsored by Oreo. In seven previous days, the seller didn't get a single bite. After the crash, other sellers offering the same Oreo car saw dozens of bidders rushing to buy them -- with prices climbing to $1200!

Opportunists scored big: A New Jersey seller of a single Earnhardt trading card, which fetched nearly $200 the night he died, noted in his listing that the item would not be shipped right away "as we are in Daytona in Turn One [using a laptop] and our housesitter is computer illiterate." Another seller of an Oreo car, listed with a starting bid of $950 the day after the Earnhardt tragedy, noted: "I am only going to sell a few and leave the man in peace." A seller from the Atlanta area, who got $2000 for a $3.99 toy car, warned potential deadbeat bidders: "This is a high auction, and legal means will be took to make you pay."

Some failed to cash in, but not for lack of trying: A seller in Wytheville, Virginia, asked -- but did not get -- $75,000 for a 1983 Wrangler poster of Earnhardt. A guy in a bar in Oaktown, Indiana, tried to get $30,000 for a life-size Earnhardt "anhieser busch" cardboard cutout. A collector in Ohio sought $20,000 for his collection of limited-edition Earnhardt model cars. And one would-be artist painted a picture of Earnhardt and listed it, in vain, at $20,000.

Best return on investment may have been to the Indianapolis owner of an $11 Earnhardt Hallmark Christmas ornament, which started out at a bid price of three cents. The seller was stunned when someone bid $14,599.99 (although the bidder did not respond to our efforts to confirm this). A seller in Charlotte, North Carolina, turned down $14,999.99 for what he said was Earnhardt's last autographed race uniform. The seller admitted he had tried unsuccessfully to sell it a few days before the race for a few hundred dollars. His reason for selling was priceless: "I'm a huge [Jeff] Gordon fan and really don't deserve such a fine piece of Earnhardt memorabilia."

Most intriguing item was an Earnhardt Winston Cup championship ring from 1991, offered by a New York City jeweler, who said he got it from an Earnhardt crew member. It sold for $5100.

The array of Earnhardt-autographed items changing hands was mind-boggling: $7100 for a hood, $6302 for a helmet, $4501 for a used door panel.

Meanwhile, Earnhardt's death set off a spending crush at racetrack concessions. At North Carolina Speedway a week after the fatal crash, Bruce Young of Pole Night Distributors, a major purveyor of NASCAR merchandise, said, "The people went crazy. At Daytona, right after the wreck, everybody flooded over to the souvenir trailers and wiped 'em out. Here, the flaps came open on Friday morning, and it started. They're buying everything. That's what normally happens when something like this happens to one of the drivers. But I tell you what: If Dale is sitting up in heaven right now looking down, he'd be proud, because his prices jumped the most."

Earnhardt's 2001 model car, which Young was selling for $60 before the Daytona 500, jumped to $400 on Sunday night.

After local television stations did features on the memorabilia crush, eager buyers went so far as to show up at Pole Night's warehouse in Monroe, North Carolina. Young said someone even tried to break in -- "with a guy sleeping inside. We've been in this tent every night. We got to." His die-cast cars were selling for $200 to $500, and his sales table had to be restocked three times over the weekend.

"Earnhardt was already No. 1 in souvenir sales to begin with," Young said. "Normally, his sales are 30 percent of what we sell. It jumped to about 55 percent. We sold out of three different coats. And normally, we don't sell a lot at this track -- there's not a lot of money here." Still, there were three Earnhardt souvenir trailers at the North Carolina track instead of the usual one. All of them had plenty of hats for sale at regular prices, but no die-cast cars, and T-shirts were scarce.

If it seemed to some that Earnhardt's followers were dancing on his grave, remember that the seven-time Winston Cup champion was a master at selling himself -- one year he sold $12 million worth of stuff. "It's kind of fitting," said one souvenir hunter, "because Dale Earnhardt himself was the master of commercialism."